From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower comes a fascinating book about religion in America, about the passions, triumphs, and failures of the life of faith, revealing stories of grace and despair, sexual scandal and attempted murder. • "Insightful...vivid...beautifully rendered stories." —Chicago Tribune Lawrence Wright's Saints and Sinners are Jimmy Swaggart, who preached a hellfire gospel with rock 'n' roll abandon before he was caught with a, prostitute in a seedy motel; Anton LaVey, the kitsch-loving, gleefully fraudulent founder of the First Church of Satan; Madalyn Murray O'Hair, whose litigious atheism sometimes resembled a brand of faith; Matthew Fox, the Dominican priest who has aroused the fury of the Vatican for dismissing the doctrine of original sin and denouncing the church as a dysfunctional family; Walker Railey, the rising star of Dallas's Methodist church, who, at the pinnacle of his success, was suspected of attempting to murder his wife; and Will Campbell, the eccentric liberal Southern Baptist preacher whose challenges to established ways of thinking have made him a legend in his own time.
"A serenely passionate chronicle of the cobbled byways of the human spirit." —San Francisco Chronicle
"Trenchant, fair-minded, gracefully written....Wright brings his subjects into sharp focus with plenty of perceptive details." —Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A very American struggle....[Wright] memorably articulates his battle...between doubt and belief." —Newsweek
"An entertaining, and insightful account...vivid...beautifully rendered stories." —Chicago Tribune
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower comes a fascinating book about religion in America, about the passions, triumphs, and failures of the life of faith, revealing stories of grace and despair, sexual scandal and attempted murder. • "Insightful...vivid...beautifully rendered stories." —Chicago Tribune Lawrence Wright's Saints and Sinners are Jimmy Swaggart, who preached a hellfire gospel with rock 'n' roll abandon before he was caught with a, prostitute in a seedy motel; Anton LaVey, the kitsch-loving, gleefully fraudulent founder of the First Church of Satan; Madalyn Murray O'Hair, whose litigious atheism sometimes resembled a brand of faith; Matthew Fox, the Dominican priest who has aroused the fury of the Vatican for dismissing the doctrine of original sin and denouncing the church as a dysfunctional family; Walker Railey, the rising star of Dallas's Methodist church, who, at the pinnacle of his success, was suspected of attempting to murder his wife; and Will Campbell, the eccentric liberal Southern Baptist preacher whose challenges to established ways of thinking have made him a legend in his own time.
Praise
"A serenely passionate chronicle of the cobbled byways of the human spirit." —San Francisco Chronicle
"Trenchant, fair-minded, gracefully written....Wright brings his subjects into sharp focus with plenty of perceptive details." —Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A very American struggle....[Wright] memorably articulates his battle...between doubt and belief." —Newsweek
"An entertaining, and insightful account...vivid...beautifully rendered stories." —Chicago Tribune
